In indirect lenticulated three dimensional (3D) photography, it is necessary to record simultaneously images of the original scene taken from plural points of observation. A plurality of two-dimensional views of a scene or object field are taken from a number of horizontally spaced vantage points and later combined beneath a lenticular screen to form a composite three-dimensional view of the field.
In the past, the image planes of a multi-lens (more than 2) 3D camera have always been positioned directly at the center behind each lens. Typically, the camera lenses are placed relatively close together (equal to the width of the negative) to avoid excessive parallax. Parallax is the apparent shift in position of an element of an object field due to the relative change in position of the element and the place from which the element is viewed. Excessive parallax creates a greater shift of object image in the 2D images taken from different viewpoints and causes the images of foreground and background objects in the 3D photograph to be out-of-focus and appear blurred, since the eyes cannot fuse the two images together to form a single solid 3D image.
Placing the camera lenses close together cannot reduce the parallax effect as the width of the negative must also be reduced because the negative is positioned immediately behind the center of each lens and the width of each negative is limited by the center-to-center separation of adjacent lenses. Enlarging the negative will simply remagnify the parallax effect between adjacent negatives.